Tuesday, October 1, 2013

Barker's Newsbites: Tuesday, October 1, 2013


Viva La Revolucion!

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10 comments:

William R. Barker said...

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/concoughlin/100238900/us-government-shutdown-barack-obama-is-presiding-over-the-end-of-americas-superpower-status/

For a country that is supposed to be the most powerful in the world, the fact that Americans have today woken up to find large swathes of their nation closed for business is humiliating.

* OR INSPIRING... DEPENDING UPON WHETHER ONE IS A SUPPORTER OF PONZI SCHEMES OR GAAP.

* YES... WE'LL WAIT AS SOME OF YOU GOOGLE "GAAP."

(*RUEFUL CHUCKLE*)

Thanks to President Barack Obama obduracy over his flagship healthcare policy, Democrats and Republicans have failed to reach agreement in Congress on the federal budget, forcing the U.S. Government to close down for the first time in 17 years...

* SOME "SHUTDOWN."

(*ROLLING MY EYES*)

...with around 700,000 federal workers being placed on indefinite leave.

* AND ODDS ARE AT THE END OF THE "SHUTDOWN" LEGISLATION WILL BE PASSED - WITH BIPARTISAN SUPPORT - TO GIVE THE WORKERS THE BACK PAY THAT THEY WOULD OTHERWISE NOT REALIZE.

(*SIGH*)

While the White House insists that essential areas of the government, such as the military, will continue to function, the shutdown represents yet a further blow to the prestige of the Obama administration at a time when it is still reeling from its inept handling of the recent Syrian crisis.

* WHAT "HANDLING...?!?!" PUTIN IS THIS STORY'S "HERO."

(*SNORT*)

[T]he longer the Obama presidency continues, the more America's status as a superpower ebbs away.

October 1, 2013 at 11:47 AM
William R. Barker said...

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303464504579107450597866932.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

As the budget histrionics continue, both parties are slyly doing what Congress does best — spend more money.

We reported last week that the GOP House has already agreed with Senate Democrats to raise spending in 2014 by $19 billion over the Budget Control Act caps — to $986 billion from $967 billion.

* I MISSED THAT! GLAD I CAUGHT IT NOW! UNFRIGGIN'BELIEVABLE, HUH, FOLKS? IF THIS IS THE FIRST YOU'RE READING OF THIS... SO MUCH FOR YOUR OTHER CHOICES OF NEWS ACCESS!

But now Senate budget experts have identified in the spending bill some $18 billion more of mostly phantom savings from "changes in mandatory spending programs," also known appropriately enough as Chimps.

* FOLKS... YOU CAN'T MAKE THIS SHIT UP!

Here's how it works: While the budget caps cover mostly discretionary spending, they include a few mandatory programs. The House bill moves $18 billion from those programs from 2014 and pushes them into future years.

* YOU'VE GOTTA BE SHITTING ME...

For example, the bill moves into 2015 $8.9 billion from the Justice Department's "crime victims fund" and $1.6 billion from the Justice and Treasury mandatory budgets, and another $800 million from the Department of Agriculture into 2015 and beyond.

* BASED UPON...?!?!

This frees up $18 billion more for Congress to spend in fiscal 2014 on discretionary accounts...without "technically" violating the sequester caps.

It's a classic shell game...

* AND, INDEED... (READ ON...)

The Members are betting they'll make a deal before 2015 to break the caps, so they'll get to spend more this year and more in the future too.

(*GNASHING MY TEETH*)

"We're almost $36 billion over the caps," says GOP Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, a rare spending whistleblower.

* A "WHISTLEBLOWER" IN WHEN PUSH COMES TO SHOVE ALIGNS WITH BOEHNER AND MCCONNELL EVERY TIME! A "WHISTLEBLOWER" LONG ON SELF-PROMOTION (KINDA LIKE MCCAIN SELF-PROMOTING HIMSELF AS A "MAVERICK") BUT SHORT OF SELFLESSNESS.

October 1, 2013 at 2:31 PM
William R. Barker said...

* TWO-PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)

http://news.investors.com/politics-andrew-malcolm/100113-673215-government-shutdown-obama-john-boehner.htm?p=full

So far, so good. Just checked the backyard. No pieces of fallen sky yet.

Hours into the partial federal government shutdown and it's difficult to tell there is one. (Save for the humorous desperation of TV folks trying to find something, anything that could be labeled calamity and blamed on those political toads in D.C.)

* BLAMMED ON THE REPUBLICANS...

(*SMIRK*)

So far, the great partial government shutdown of 2013 looks like a full bust.

Like that Y2K apocalypse that didn't happen.

Or President Obama's dire sequester warnings that went Poof!

* ABC NEWS RADIO JUST RAN A BLURB OF A TOURIST FROM WASHINGTON STATE COMPLAINING THAT THE STATUE OF LIBERTY HAD CANCELLED TOURS.

This faux crisis really has little to do with spending. Or even the train wreck called ObamaCare, which continues today too.

It has to do with Obama trying to thwart history and win the 2014 midterm elections 13 months from now. And that non-strategy is based on him keeping most Americans fighting with each other so much that they don't notice the only thing that this "president" is doing is talking.

Talk. Talk. Talk. Talk. Talk.

"Please be seated."

"I love you back."

"I am absolutely confident that..."

* AND OF COURSE ATTACKING REPUBLICANS...

Talk himself into trouble on Syria. Talk himself into trouble on attacking Syria. Talk himself into trouble on ObamaCare. Talk himself into trouble on the deficit. According to this guy, the country's budget deficits are falling faster than in decades. Of course, after four unprecedented years of $1 trillion-plus deficits, they can't go much higher and have farther to fall.

* IF THE GOP ESTABLISHMENT HAD HALF A BRAIN BETWEEN THEM EACH AND EVERY REPUBLICAN WOULD BE SPOUTING THE SAME FIGURE, NAMELY, THE AMOUNT OF DEBT OBAMA'S "OPEN" GOVERNMENT WAS ADDING TO THE NATIONAL DEBT EACH AND EVERY MINUTE... HOUR... DAY... WEEK... MONTH...

* TO BE CONTINUED...

October 1, 2013 at 3:22 PM
William R. Barker said...

* CONCLUDING... (Part 2 of 2)

Obama's mute on the national debt.

* AND SO ARE MOST REPUBLICANS!

(*HEADACHE*)

Treasury Secy. Jack Lew...

* COO AT Citigroup FROM 2006 TO 2008...

...warns the country will run out of money later this month.

* BECAUSE IT SPENDS MORE THAN IT TAKES IN...!!!

The country ran out of money $17 trillion ago. It's all borrowed since then, much of it by this administration.

Obama is off on another expensive Asian trip in a few days.

* OF COURSE HE IS...

That's how much of a "crisis" this fiscal year showdown is. Not that it might matter. Obama, who has been negotiating with Russia and Iran of all places, has refused to negotiate with the U.S. Congress like the true leader he isn't. Instead of pulling people together as he promised in 2007-08, Obama went golfing last weekend.

* FOLKS... YOU KNOW IT'S TRUE!

And most of the media covers for him.

* YEP!

Remember how Obama's two most recent Defense secretaries - Panetta and Gates - lambasted him just the other day for showing weakness to the world and having no strategy on Syria?

(You probably don't remember, unless you read it here at Investors.com. The MSM decided that wasn't newsworthy.)

(Think the decision to ignore would have been the same if the president was George W. Bush?)

Obama's counting on that tacit media support continuing...

* AND WHY SHOULDN'T HE? IT IS WHAT IT IS.

A new Gallup Poll released this morning indicates Obama may place too much store in a shutdown backlash. The study shows there's no long-term impact on voters' views of the U.S. or a shutdown's protagonists.

What if an intransigent Obama forced a partial government shutdown, the 18th in recent decades and what people noticed was that things actually seemed to run pretty well with nearly 900,000 "non-essential" federal workers furloughed from Obama's bloated workforce of 2.2 million?

* QUESTION...

Why should American taxpayers pay for any non-essential workers? If we can do without nearly 900,000 "non-essential" personnel today with all their costly benefits and accruing pensions, why not tomorrow? And next week? And next year?

October 1, 2013 at 3:22 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.cato.org/blog/testifying-joint-economic-committee-about-debt-limit-brinksmanship?utm_content=buffer285da&utm_source=buffer&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Buffer

* FIRST AND FOREMOST...

America’s main fiscal problem is that government is too big. That’s the disease. Deficits and debt are symptoms of that underlying problem.

Second, you achieve good fiscal policy by following “Mitchell’s Golden Rule” so that government grows slower than private sector economic output.

Third, we’ve made some progress in the last two years thanks to genuine fiscal restraint, and we can balance the budget in a very short period of time if lawmakers impose a very modest bit of spending discipline in the future.

* I DON'T BELIEVE THIS. (AND EVEN IF I DID... DOESN'T IT CONFLICT WITH THE FIRST POINT?)

The fourth point...is that there’s no risk of default - unless the Obama Administration deliberately wants that to happen. (But that’s simply not a realistic possibility.)

* FRANKLY... I PUT NOTHING PAST OBAMA AND HIS LACKIES.

Greece is now suffering through a very deep recession, with record unemployment and harsh economic conditions. Rhetorical question: Wouldn’t it have been preferable if there was some sort of mechanism, say, 15 years ago, that would have enabled some lawmakers to throw sand in the gears so that the government couldn’t issue any more debt?

Yes, there would have been some budgetary turmoil at the time, but it would have been trivial compared to the misery the Greek people currently are enduring.

(*NOD*)

We know we’re on an unsustainable path. Do we want to wait until we hit a crisis before we address the over-spending crisis? Or do we want to take prudent and modest steps today - such as genuine entitlement reform and spending caps - to ensure prosperity and long-run growth?

* THE ANSWER... THE OBVIOUS ANSWER BASED UPON HISTORY...? "WE" WANT TO WAIT. (NOT "ME," "WE," BUT CERTAINLY THE AVERAGE POLITICAN AND APPARENTLY AT LEAST HALF OF THE COUNTRY!

Seems like the answer should be simple... at least if you’re not trying to get reelected by bribing voters with their own money.

* BUT MOST POLITICIANS ARE! THAT'S WHY THE ANSWER IS SIMPLE... AND DEPRESSING.

October 1, 2013 at 3:35 PM
William R. Barker said...

* TWO-PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303464504579105393340188668.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_AboveLEFTTop

The White House announced on Friday a $320 million bailout, er, "aid package" for the bankrupt city of Detroit because of "exceptional" circumstances.

(But to adapt President Obama, every broke city believes in its own exceptionalism, and now others will want a financial infusion too.)

* IN FACT, IT'S ALREADY BEGUN!

Congressman Jerry McNerney (D., Cal.) sent the White House a letter on Friday asking why "comparable assistance" was not offered to the San Joaquin Valley city of Stockton, which declared bankruptcy in 2012 and suffers from many of the same problems as Detroit. "This is not a time for favoritism," he wrote.

(*SHRUG*)

The federal funds, which were cobbled together from programs including TARP and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, are supposedly intended to encourage private investment. The aid includes $150 million to remove blight and spur redevelopment; $30 million for public safety and to hire 150 firefighters; and $140 million to improve transportation.

The Administration is also offering its technical expertise to help overhaul the city's dysfunctional computer systems.

(Let's hope those aren't the same guys who designed the ObamaCare exchanges.)

* TO BE CONTINUED...

October 1, 2013 at 6:31 PM
William R. Barker said...

* CONCLUDING... (Part 2 of 2)

Foundations such as Kresge, Ford, Knight and Skillman have already poured more than $70 million this year into initiatives to rebuild Detroit. Kresge alone has committed $35 million for the city's new street-car system and $150 million over five years to implement the Detroit Future City plan to revive downtrodden neighborhoods. Two weeks ago, NCB Capital Impact and Kresge announced a $30.25 million fund to support development along the street-car line.

* FOLKS... UNDERSTAND... PRIVATE CHARITIES OPERATE ON TAX FREE DONATIONS... MEANING THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT (AND STATE GOVERNMENTS) ARE LOSING "FAIR SHARE" DOLLARS OUT OF EACH DONATION TO THE FOUNDATIONS GOING TO DETROIT. MY POINT...? LOTS OF SMOKE AND MIRRORS... LOTS OF THREE-CARD-MONTY WITH REGARDS TO WHICH POCKET IS GETTING PICKED!

Businesses have also chipped in. The Downtown Detroit Partnership, which includes Penske Automotive, Quicken Loans, Ford, GM and Chrysler, is donating 100 new police cars and 23 ambulances.

* SO AGAIN NO TAX REVENUE ON THE SALES TAX... AND THE CORPORATIONS GET TO WRITE-OFF THE DONATIONS SO NO CORPORATE TAX INCOME THERE!

All of this private philanthropy preceded the Obama Administration's pledged assistance.

Emergency manager Kevyn Orr has welcomed the Obama Administration's assistance while insisting that the cash infusion will not affect his plans to restructure the city in bankruptcy. That's nice of him to say, but federal cash is never free. Grants from the Transportation and Housing and Urban Development Departments will require the city to pay prevailing union wages, which will jack up costs.

(*PURSED LIPS*)

Mr. Orr's bankruptcy plan includes re-investing $1.25 billion in city services over 10 years by reducing debt service and pension costs. About $50 million in debt savings this year are earmarked for blight removal. These plans are crucial to getting the city back on a sustainable path that matches revenue. But with the arrival of federal aid, the unions will argue the city no longer needs to cut pensions.

(That may have even been part of the White House calculation.)

* ANOTHER OBAMA-STEERED TAXPAYER BAILOUT OF FRIENDLY UNIONS... NAH... NOT OUR BELOVED PRESIDENT..

(*SNORT*)

White House spokesman Jay Carney had previously said there would be no bailout.

* HE LIED.

But according to National Economic Council director Gene Sperling, who flew to Detroit to announce the gift, Detroit's bankruptcy was "an exceptional thing happening during the Obama administration" and merited an exceptional federal response.

* UH-HUH...

However, [in reality,] Detroit's problems — debt, crime, failing schools and public-union dominance — are endemic to urban America.

The Administration's back-door bailout of Detroit is pure political favoritism. It reinforces the belief among government unions that some cities are too-big-to-fail and rewards politicians who obstruct reform. Maybe if Illinois's politicians let their state and city pension deficits get worse, the White House will come to their rescue too.

(*SIGH*)

October 1, 2013 at 6:31 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2013/10/01/reid_supporter_whittemore_gets_2_years_in_campaign_cash_case_120171.html

Ex-Nevada power broker Harvey Whittemore...

* POWER BROKEN BECAUSE HE WAS A WELL-KNOWN FRIEND OF U.S. SENATE MAJORITY LEADER HARRY REID...

...admitted he was "arrogant and naive" but insisted "I'm not greedy" before a judge sentenced him Monday to two years in prison for funneling more than $130,000 in illegal campaign funds to Sen. Harry Reid's re-election committee in 2007.

* AND REID? HE CONTINUES TO... er... "SERVE" THE PUBLIC.

U.S. District Court Judge Larry Hicks also ordered Whittemore to pay $100,000 in fines for his three felony convictions and serve 100 hours community service upon his release from a yet-to-be determined prison that houses white-collar criminals.

* WHY DO WHITE COLLAR CRIMINALS GET THEIR OWN PRISON...???

The 61-year-old former lobbyist and wealthy developer is to surrender on his own to federal authorities on Jan. 31, 2014.

"These offenses go to the very heart of our electoral process," Hicks said.

* THE SYSTEM WHERE WHITTEMORE GOES TO JAIL AND REID DOESN'T...

Prosecutors said Whittemore gave money to family members and employees in 2007 to make contributions he had promised to Reid while concealing himself as the true source to skirt campaign finance laws.

Whittemore was convicted in May on three felony counts related to his use of conduit, or "straw" donors, to take money he gave them and in turn write checks totaling more than $133,000 to Reid's 2007 re-election campaign.

Prosecutors described Whittemore as a greedy, power-hungry, unrepentant crook whose "well-conceived and well-executed scheme" was intended to skirt federal election laws by hiding the true source of the money. His "motivation to do so was not borne from political ideology...

* NO? HOW MUCH DID HE GIVE TO JOHN BOEHNER?

(*SMIRK*)

...hero worship or naivete. Rather it was a knowing and cynical act, conceived in greed, arrogance and the lust for power," Assistant U.S. Attorney Steven Myhre said.

* LUST FOR POWER, HUH? AND WAS HE GIVEN POWER BY HARRY REID IN RETURN FOR HIS DONATIONS...???

October 1, 2013 at 10:33 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-24356037

Torture and ill-treatment, sometimes resulting in death, is "widespread" in Libyan jails, a new UN report says.

* U.S. SUPPORTED LIBYAN JAILS...??? (I MEAN... THESE ARE THE FOLKS OBAMA PUT IN POWER... RIGHT?)

The UN estimates about 8,000 people are still being held in relation to the 2011 conflict which ended in the overthrow of Col Gaddafi.

The vast majority are being held without due process, the report says.

Torture is being used "as a means to extract confessions or other information", the UN says.

* AGAIN... THE ARE THE PEOPLE OBAMA PUT IN POWER... THESE ARE OBAMA'S ALLIES...

(*SHRUG*)

The report does note however that the use of torture is happening "despite the efforts of the Libyan authorities which are committed at the highest level to ending torture and to ensuring the proper functioning of the criminal justice system".

* DO YOU SUPPOSED THE REPORT NOTES THIS BECAUSE... er.. WELL... THE UN ALSO SUPPORTED PUTTING THESE ANIMALS IN POWER?

October 1, 2013 at 10:38 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/10/01/203818/obama-spy-panel-is-loaded-with.html

After a public backlash to government spying, President Barack Obama called for an "independent" group to review the vast surveillance programs that allow the collections of phone and email records.

Now, weeks before the group’s first report is due, some lawmakers, technology organizations and civil liberties groups are concerned that the panel’s members are too close to the Obama administration and its mission too vague to provide a thorough scrubbing of the National Security Agency technologies that have guided intelligence gathering since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

The Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies works in the office of the director of national intelligence; reports to its director, James Clapper, who’s been accused of lying to Congress about the programs...

* HE DID LIE TO CONGRESS!

...and has ties to his current and former bosses, Obama and former President Bill Clinton.

“There is ample evidence now that we need an independent investigation of the impact of the NSA’s spying program on Americans’ constitutional rights and civil liberties,” said Sen. Tom Udall, D-N.M., who has advocated for NSA changes. “A task force appointed by the president, reporting to the DNI, certainly won’t inspire confidence and may simply rubber-stamp a program that is dangerously infringing on Americans’ privacy rights.”

* YA THINK SO, TOM...?!?! (AND THIS IS A DEMOCRAT!)

The members of the review group are Richard Clarke, the chief counterterrorism adviser on the National Security Council for Clinton who later worked for Republican President George W. Bush; Michael Morell, Obama’s former deputy CIA director; law professor Geoffrey Stone, who has raised money for Obama and spearheads a committee hoping to build Obama’s presidential library in Chicago; law professor Cass Sunstein, administrator of information and regulatory affairs for Obama; and Peter Swire, a former Office of Management and Budget privacy director for Clinton.

(*SNORT*)

“At the end of the day, a task force led by Gen. Clapper full of insiders – and not directed to look at the extensive abuse – will never get at the bottom of the unconstitutional spying,” said Mark Jaycox, a policy analyst for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a privacy advocacy group.

The review group met with Obama in late August and with a dozen civil liberties and business groups in a pair of meetings in September. Some who attended said they raised concerns about the programs, but panel members – at least one was missing from each meeting – did not respond to them, saying in several instances they could not reveal information because it is classified.

(*SNORT*)

The panel’s meetings are closed anyway after Clapper exempted it from the U.S. Federal Advisory Committee Act, which would have required it to keep the public informed and hold open meetings, for “reasons of national security,” according to a statement from the group sent from Clapper’s office.

* YOU'RE READING WHAT I'M READING, RIGHT...???

October 1, 2013 at 10:48 PM

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